Line-Edit: Done. Now Onto Some Cool Stuff

Hello everyone. I am EXHAUSTED.

    Let's just say that the so-called "easy" line-edit ended up being a much more challenging task than I had initially made it out to be. I went into these editing sessions with my experience with my first documentary, Counter Conformity, fully knowing I transcribed, organized, and completed the entire line edit in just a few hours. As you can probably tell, it was not this easy this time around.

    First of all, the interviews were WAY longer than in Counter Conformity. Even when chopped up and ready to be edited (I made sure to delete parts of Kim asking questions or long pauses), the interviews were either an hour or even up to an hour and a half! It was a lot to work with, especially with such a hefty topic (and of course, really well-spoken interviewees whose answers were all too beautiful to scrap). Speaking of the topic, I realized that we needed to be careful as to how we introduced and explained the male gaze, since many people do not fully understand the concept the first time it is introduced. Because of this, I managed to edit the parts about implicit bias, unconscious and conscious choices in production as well as the lack of minorities leading the film industry - the only issue was that it took a WHILE to even mention the male gaze. It took some time for me to cut it down and even longer for Kim and I to decide how to cut it down even further. Thankfully, we were able to shave off a good amount of the beginning, only leaving the crucial points in there. In the end, the line-edit ended up totaling up to around 28 minutes, which considering the original 4 hours of interview footage, was pretty manageable. I'm really excited to make a longer documentary, especially for a topic as complex as this one.

    Also, since Kim was already over, she worked on the magazine article and finalized the social media, allowing me to test out the masking process for the TVs. I tried it on a few clips and it is looking like the Ultra Key effect on Premiere Pro (especially with the masking option on the effect itself) will work well. 

*Note: The Ultra Key effect is what is used to "key out" a certain color from a video. You basically apply it onto a clip, select the color you want to remove, and boom! The sections of the frame that contain that specific shade become transparent. For those that were wondering, yes - this is the effect used on green screens, since you would simply key out the green, leaving you with the transparent background and allowing you to put your subject wherever you please. When doing this with the TVs, I was basically masking out the shade of the screen that way the linear and static textures would remain, but I would be able to place the movie excerpts below in their own layer. Hopefully that made sense...

Anyway, now that I've sort of explained what this effect is, here is a picture of me trying it out (I used a B-roll clip to see what footage would look like on the TVs, and notice how the TV-like texture appears to be on top of the B-roll clip, making it look realistic):

    As for the magazine article, Kim found out that a lot of docu-series tend to do simple Q&A articles in which the director or crew of a specific project get to give some behind-the-scenes information about the inception of the project idea, the creation process, and even future plans for the series. She interviewed me and began working on it. Here are some of the templates she was looking at:

    Anyway, now with a clear plan and solid foundation, it is time to get some B-roll on the timeline and get this footage rolling! I am genuinely proud of the structure and cannot wait to see how it looks like with the staged B-roll on top. It's going to be awesome.

Talk to you guys soon!